CERES GEO GMS-5: Hourly Cloud and Radiation Properties at 4 km Resolution

SatCORPS CERES GEO Edition 4 GMS-5 Full Disk Version 2 is a data product providing hourly cloud micro-physical and radiation properties derived from GMS-5 geostationary satellite imager data. The dataset is produced by NASA's Langley Research Center using SatCORPS algorithms to support the Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) project, a key component of the Earth Observing System. Observations are at 4 km resolution at nadir and are sub-sampled to 8 km, arranged as hourly files in netCDF-4 format.

Use Cases

• Modeling the Earth's diurnal radiation cycle based on hourly cloud property estimates.
• Analyzing cloud micro-physical properties derived from geostationary satellite imager data.
• Estimating radiative fluxes between CERES instrument measurement times.
• Studying regional cloud and radiation dynamics from full-disk geostationary observations.

Strengths

• Data is derived from the GMS-5 geostationary satellite, providing consistent hourly observations.
• Observations are at a high spatial resolution of 4 km at nadir.
• The dataset supports the CERES project, a long-running NASA Earth Observing System program with instruments launched from 1997 to 2017.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The description does not specify the exact temporal coverage of the data.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Collection Method

Derived from Visible and Infrared Spin Scan Radiometer instrument data on the GMS-5 platform using Langley Research Center SatCORPS algorithms.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-12 22:11:10.272806; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Full disk coverage from the GMS-5 geostationary satellite.